


You died and took me with you

by HistoireEternelle



Category: La casa de papel | Money Heist (TV)
Genre: Angst, Berlin lives, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, I Don't Even Know, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Martin needs a hug, Suicidal Thoughts, and a housekeeper, and he actually has a good reason for not coming back sooner, i guess?, there's a corpse involved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24424030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HistoireEternelle/pseuds/HistoireEternelle
Summary: Andrés comes back to Martín two years after the Mint heist and Martín wants answers.
Relationships: Berlin | Andrés de Fonollosa & Palermo | Martín Berrote, Berlin | Andrés de Fonollosa/Palermo | Martín Berrote
Comments: 13
Kudos: 117





	You died and took me with you

**Author's Note:**

> First time I try to play with those two idiots. I hope they're not too OOC. Also, I'm french and that fic is not beta'ed so I apologize for any mistakes you'll find. If anyone wants to help, feel free to send a message.
> 
> Enjoy!

The loud knocking on his door was what woke him up from his drunken slumber. Martín had always been a heavy sleeper, but since Andrés death, alcohol was the only way he could make sure nightmares would not wake him screaming and crying in the middle of the night. If he had thought that Andrés leaving him after their kiss had been the worst day of his life, he had been mistaken. Seeing Andrés' mugshot on the news followed by "has been killed by the police" had certainly been worse. 

Leaving the dirty sheets of his no less dirty bed, he wobbled to the door, ready to rip the head off of whoever thought it would be a good idea to wake him up in the middle of the night. Yanking the door open, the momentum almost making him lose his balance, he felt a punch in the chest, his vindictive words dying on his tongue. In front of him, his face half hidden in the shadows, stood Andrés, his suit perfectly tailored to his body, the curls in his hair not touched by the windy night and a small smile on his lips. At that moment, Martín hated him as much as he loved him. 

"Will you let me in?" Andrés asked when Martín didn't move from the doorway. 

"No," he replied, closing the door in Andrés' face.

The man had always been overconfident but that was the icing on the cake. And how could it be possible anyway? Andrés was dead, he saw it on the news, they even showed it live when they took his body out of the Mint. Andrés was dead and Martín was hallucinating. His mind was finally taking its leave and soon he would be a raging lunatic, a bottle of alcohol always in hand, living in the street. No. Of course not. Sergio wouldn't let him fall that far. Since the heist, each month, Sergio had wired the same amount of money on his bank account. It was more than enough to live comfortably. And of course, Martín had used it all on drugs and alcohol. That was how pathetic he was.

"Martín, please, let me in." Andrés' voice was muffled by the wooden door, but Martín could still hear it.

"No! You're not real. You're dead. You died and I with you," Martín replied, shaking his head, trying to dislodge that unwanted occupant from his mind.

"I didn't die. I'm real. Let me in and I'll explain everything. Please, cariño, it's the middle of the night. Let me in."

Martín was almost at his bed, when he heard the words his hallucination said. Cariño. Love. How mean was his mind to make  _ him  _ call him that? Sighing deeply, Martín walked back to the door and flung it open, startling the other man. He chuckled under his breath at how elaborate his sick mind was making his visions.

"Come on in then," Martín said, bowing low, a sarcastic smile on his lips.

Eyebrow raised, Andrés walked past Martín and stopped a few feet inside the apartment. It was a mess. Empty bottles lying on the floor, some of them even broken leaving pieces of glass scattered against the walls.

"You don't like what you see?" Martín asked angrily when he saw the other man take in the room. "Too bad, because that's all I have. If you don't like it, you can still leave."

With each word he took a step closer to Andrés, his anger rising the closer he got, until he was finally in front of the other man, their chests almost touching. That hallucination was way too realistic for his poor drunken mind, he could even feel the cold emanating from the body in front of him. Slowly, almost shyly, Martín raised a trembling hand, and laid a single finger on Andrés' cold cheek. At the feeling of skin under his finger, tears filled Martín's eyes and he collapsed. 

When he woke up, light was streaming down Martín's face, burning through his eyelids and pounding alongside his hangover in his head. He could feel the soft breeze from the opened window graze his face and he frowned. He was pretty sure the drapes had been closed for months and he didn't even know if the windows opened. What was going on? Groaning, he finally opened his eyes and blinked at the sight.

From his bed he had a partial view of his living room and what he saw was puzzling him. The sun was shining through the apartment and the floor was spotless. No sign of empty bottles — whole or shattered — and the corner by the fridge had been cleared of the pile of empty milk cartons and newspapers he had accumulated. 

"What the fuck is going on?" he grumbled under his breath, finally getting up. 

He had had the strangest dream last night. Andrés was here and alive and Martín couldn't help his heart starting to beat faster at the thought that it hadn't been a dream. That Andrés, his soulmate, was still alive and back by his side. Shaking his head, Martín berated himself for such a stupid hope. He didn't know what was going on, but he knew for sure that Andrés was dead and that, even if he had still been alive, he wouldn't spend the night cleaning his pigsty of an apartment. 

Leaving what passed as a bedroom, Martín took in the room. It was actually spotless, the floor had been cleaned of the garbage he accumulated, not a single piece of glass had been forgotten in a corner and even the half empty bottles of alcohol had disappeared — and Martín couldn't say he was happy about that. But the apartment was otherwise empty. Scratching his head, Martín checked every corner — not that it was that big — but came back to his starting point empty handed. He was alone. Could he have had a sleepwalking experience and cleaned the fuck out of his apartment? He snickered at the thought. The only thing a sleepwalking episode would have brought was him throwing himself out the window — window that obviously opened. 

"Oh great! You're finally awake."

The voice made him freeze on the spot, his back to the front door, looking out of the opened window. Andrés. Tears started to pool into his eyes — and he didn't know if they were from the rage he felt rising in his chest or the happiness that was battling with it. Slowly, as if fearing moving too fast would spook what was obviously a hallucination, Martín turned on his heels and froze again when he met the warm look in the eyes of his lost love. Andrés was standing in front of the closed door, his perfectly tailored suit —the same as the one he wore in what was obviously not a dream from last night — a little bit rumpled and bags full of groceries in his hands. 

"You cleaned," was all Martín could murmur when Andrés crossed the room to put the bags on the kitchen table. 

"Yes, how can you live like that, Martín?" Andrés tutted, shaking his head before starting to fill the fridge with food where there once had only been booze and milk.

He watched as the man started taking out pans and bowls, obviously planning on cooking breakfast for both of them and Martín snapped. 

"What do you think you're doing?" he barked, walking to Andrés to stop him but he couldn't bring himself to touch him. It was too painful. 

"Making breakfast, you lost an ungodly amount of weight. You need to eat, Martín," Andrés replied as if it was a perfectly good explanation of him being here after so long, for him being alive.

"Fuck you, Andrés," Martín spat, turning around and closing the door of the bathroom behind him. 

It was the only separated room in the apartment and he needed time to calm himself or he would beat the shit out of Andrés. He couldn't bear the casual tone Andrés used, as if he hadn't destroyed Martín with a kiss and a few words before dying on him. Or not dying as it turned out. Taking deep breaths to calm down, Martín decided to take a shower and dress as a somewhat human being before confronting Andrés and finally getting the answers to the questions he had been asking himself for years. 

After his shower, he tiptoed into his bedroom to get some clean clothes, sending a look to the kitchen to see Andrés sitting at the table, plates full of food in front of him, sipping coffee. Martín frowned at the wishful look on the man's face. 

Shaking his head, he grabbed a pair of jeans and a shirt before closing the bathroom door behind him once again. It'd been ages since he last put on real clothes and his mirror wasn't being kind to him. His jeans hung low on his hips, he had lost so much weight he could count his ribs, the bones poking at his skin. His once golden skin as white as a dead fish. Putting on the shirt, he fastened the buttons, not wanting to see how wasted his body had become any longer. It was Andrés' fault. Everything was his fault, and Martín wanted answers.

Exiting the bathroom, Martín walked to the kitchen, ready to confront Andrés. He stopped at the smile the other man sent him when he reached the table. It hurt. It hurt so much to see the tenderness in that simple gesture. It hurt to remember that once upon a time, Andrés had always looked at him like that, with that spark in his eyes. 

"How did you survive?" Martín asked, his voice cold.

"Don't you want to eat first? I promised I would tell you everything," Andrés replied, his smile still in place.

"I don't give a fuck about eating, that at least should be obvious," Martín retorted, gesturing to his body. "I want answers, Andrés" he spat the name as if it would leave a bad taste in his mouth. "I want answers and then I want you to leave and never come back."

Andrés watched him closely, his eyes narrowed and Martín was sure he would get up and leave, leaving him once again in the dark. And he wouldn't even be surprised. 

"We used a decoy," Andrés said after a long moment of silence.

"A decoy?" Martín prompted when Andrés didn't continue on his own.

"Sergio thought I was dying," Andrés sighed. "Hell, I thought I was dying," he added, his eyes never leaving Martín's, begging him silently to understand what he wasn't saying. "So when Helsinki fucked up with the car, Sergio threw me to the wolves. He left that button in the car and suddenly, the police had my name and started spewing lies about me."

Martín could hear the anger in Andrés' voice. He had felt the same when, his eyes glued to the TV, he had heard what they accused Andrés of. As if a sophisticated lover of arts as Andrés de Fonollosa would lower himself to such evil. Andrés was an artist and his way of breaking the law was like him. Sophisticated, beautiful, perfect. 

"I'm gonna kill Sergio," Martín growled, not believing Sergio would be so cold hearted he would sacrifice his own brother. 

"It won’t be necessary, but thank you all the same,” Andrés eyes were soft when he looked at Martín. “It was part of the plan. Plan I didn't know about until we had to put it in action," Andrés smiled ruefully. "See, as soon as the media got hold of my name, I knew there was no hope for me. I had to die or I would be in hiding for the rest of my short and miserable life. The doctors had given me a year at most," he added with a pointed look. " So I was ready to sacrifice myself to make sure Sergio would live a free man. And the others too, of course," he added like an afterthought. 

"How did you get out of the Mint? And what about that decoy?" Martín asked, not sure how he felt about Sergio and his "plans". He had a pounding migraine and could feel his hands shaking because of the lack of alcohol in his system and Andrés had always loved to hear the sound of his own voice.

"You already know how we got out of the Mint. Sergio had the tunnel dug a few years back. But it wasn't as short as he let us believe. Anyway, when he planted that button in the car, he knew that plan Berlin — how touching, don't you think? — had to be put in action. So he sent the miners to work two days ahead of schedule. And between flirting with the  _ Inspectora  _ —she actually joined him in Thailand, can you believe that? — and managing that Tokyo bitch, he scrounged every morgue in Europe to find a body that looked close enough from mine and put a bullet through its face."

"Sergio did what!?" Martín exclaimed. The mild mannered nerd he knew would never have had the guts to do that. Even to a corpse. Maybe years had changed the man. Or maybe he was more similar to Andrés than he had thought. He had known both brothers were narcissistic psychopaths but hearing about Sergio's actions was profoundly shocking for Martín. 

"What happened next? "Martín couldn't help the excitement in his voice. He had spent the last two years mourning the love of his life, his soulmate, and now he really wanted to know the end of the story. 

"As I said, the miners were two days ahead of schedule, so imagine Moscow's surprise when they started crawling out of that hole unexpectedly. Sergio was with them, of course. Along with a dead body," he chuckled at the memory of Moscow's face when he had come to get him. "He explained the plan to all of us. We had to wait for the very last moment before leaving the Mint or it wouldn't work. We lost Oslo and Moscow because of that," Andrés sighed.

He had liked both men. Oslo hadn't been much of a talker and lacked finesse, but he had been a soldier and a good one. And Moscow had been the group's father. A place Andrés hadn't been able to fulfill because, to be perfectly honest, he hadn't given a fuck about the others.

"Anyway," he cleared his throat before continuing his story. "Tokyo and Rio were in the warehouse when the police breached our defenses. Almost all the money was already out of the Mint, what was left was to keep apparences for the hostages, they couldn't know how far ahead we were. We took cover in the vault while the police were closing in on us. The decoy was already in place beside the Browning. All I had to do was take a few bullets in the chest, fall down and let Helsinki drag me to the tunnel. It was easy, really. With the smoke grenades they were throwing at us, it was easy to slip through their fingers and run like never down the tunnel, blowing it up as soon as we were clear," Andrés finished, smiling smugly until he saw the murderous look on Martín's face.

"All you had to do was take a few bullets in the chest? A  _ few _ bullets, Andrés?" Martín finally exploded.

"I had a bulle…"

"What if they shot you in the face? Or the leg and you couldn't run? What if they had used different amo?" Martín snarled, anger dripping from each word. He had spent years asking himself if he could have saved Andrés if he had been there. And now he was saying that taking a few bullets to the chest wasn't such a big deal. Martín was livid, so he went for the last information he needed. "You're obviously not dead, so the doctors fucked up," he spat and saw Andrés recoil at the venom in his voice. 

"They didn't _ fuck up,  _ as you say. I WAS dying! But with all the money we had, Sergio found a treatment. Don't ask how or where, I don't know. I receive a single syringe filled with medicine each month and that's it," Andrés explained, trying to calm Martín down.

"And what took you so long?" Martín finally found the courage to ask. "What are you doing here, Andrés? You've been perfectly clear the last time we saw each other."

Andrés wouldn't let it show, but Martín's tone had hurt him deeply and, as always with emotions he didn't understand, his only response was to hurt back so he did what he swore he never would. He told Martín the truth. 

"I almost died, Martín!" Andrés' voice rose for the first time since he started talking. "I was a fucking vegetable for months after the heist. I was ready to die when Sergio found the treatment, it was my last chance and Sergio forced it on me. And it worked, but I remember everything from those months. I remember my fucking  _ hermanito _ feeding me because I couldn't hold a fucking fork. I remember soiling myself. The shame and the anger at my treacherous body that was failing me while leaving my mind as sharp as ever!" Andrés was yelling, tears burning in his eyes. "I had made my peace, Martín. My only regret was not having seen you again before dying, but I was ready," Andrés breathed, his anger finally spent, closing the distance between him and Martín. 

He had to touch him. Being apart was physically hurting him. So he lifted his hand slowly, his fingers grazing the tear streaked cheeks of the man before him.

"I would have stayed with you, you know that," Martín breathed, loving the feeling of  Andrés' tender touch.

"Don't you think it would have been even worse with you by my side?" Andrés asked softly. "Why do you think I was so cruel to you, Martín? Why do you think I broke your heart?" he added when he saw the stricken expression on Martín's face. "I couldn't bear the idea of you seeing me like that. I wanted you to remember me as the handsome devil I am," he laughed at that. "I didn't want the love of my life to see me so diminished. I love you, Martín," he added in a soft voice, his tears finally spilling from his eyes. 

"99%," Martín mumbled under his breath. 

He could feel his heart hammering against his ribs, turning Andrés' words in his mind, trying to understand what he was saying. The last time Andrés had told him those words, Martín had had his heart broken. He could still see the gun lying in its velvet covered box, its cold feeling on his temple, under his chin. He could still smell the thang of gun powder, the ringing in his ears after he had shot every single bullet, making sure he wouldn't do anything stupid.

"What was that?" Andrés asked, not sure he had heard him.

"Only 99% of you loves me, Andrés," Martín said louder, taking a step back, Andrés's hand slipping from his cheek.

"Oh my God, Martín! Didn't you hear me? I explained why I did it. That mitochondria bullshit was just that. Bullshit. I told you before, Martín. We  _ are _ soulmates. I love you. I've loved you for so long I didn't even realize what it was until you kissed me. I came back to you as soon as I had recovered enough."

"And yet you left with Tatiana! You told me you loved me! You kissed me back and then you broke me and left!" Martín was crying now, he wasn't rational, his anger mixed with the pain he still felt at the memories.

"I already told you why! I left with Tatiana because it was the easy thing to do. I didn't love her. I was a coward and I hurt you so badly. And I'm so sorry, Martín.  _ Mi amor _ . Please, forgive me. I promise I would never leave you again. I promise…" Andrés wrapped his arms around Martín's trembling body, tears streaming down their faces.

"Please, forgive me," Andrés finally breathed against Martín's head. "Please," he begged once more, pulling back to look at Martín's face. 

Slowly, as not to scare him, Andrés lowered his head, leaving enough time for Martín to turn his head or push him away, before grazing his lips against Martín's in an aerial kiss. It had nothing to do with their last kiss. It had been full of passion and need. This one was pure tenderness. Pure love. And Martín couldn't stop the small whimper from escaping his throat at the feeling of Andrés's lips on his.

"I love you," Andrés breathed against his lips.

Martín closed his eyes at the words. He wasn't entirely sure he was believing what the man kissing him so tenderly was saying but he was ready to give him a chance to prove himself. A last chance. He still had that pistol stored somewhere in his apartment after all. 

"I love you too," he murmured before crashing his lips on Andrés'. He would take whatever he could until he was sure Andrés was sincere and meant to stay with him this time.

"I love you so much."

Maybe this time around, he could be the lover  _ and  _ the beloved.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to talk, you can find me on [Tumblr](https://histoireeternelle.tumblr.com/)


End file.
